Scientist stood to gain profit from vaccines

August 02, 2008|By David Willman, Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times

Bruce Ivins, the government biodefense scientist linked to the deadly anthrax mailings of 2001, stood to gain financially from the massive federal spending in the fear-filled aftermath of those killings, the Los Angeles Times has learned.

Ivins is listed as a co-inventor on two patents for a genetically engineered anthrax vaccine, federal records show. Separately, he also is listed as a co-inventor on an application to patent an additive for various biodefense vaccines.

Ivins, 62, died Tuesday, apparently of a suicide. Federal authorities had informed his lawyer that criminal charges related to the mailings would be filed.

As a co-inventor of a new anthrax vaccine, Ivins was among those in line to collect patent royalties if the product had had come to market, according to an executive familiar with the matter. The product had languished on lab shelves until the Sept. 11 attacks and the anthrax mailings, after which officials raced to stockpile vaccines and antidotes against biological terrorism.

A San Francisco-area biotechnology company, VaxGen, won a federal contract worth $877.5 million to provide batches of the new vaccine. One executive familiar with the matter said that, as a condition of its purchasing the vaccine from the Army, VaxGen had agreed to share sales-related proceeds with the inventors.

"Some proportion would have been shared with the inventors," said the executive, who spoke anonymously because of contractual confidentiality. "Ivins would have stood to make tens of thousands of dollars, but not millions."

Two years after the contract was awarded to VaxGen, the pact was terminated when the company could not deliver its batches on schedule. Ivins also was listed as one of two inventors of another biodefense-related product that has won federal sponsorship.